Extranet Case Management

Extranets can be a terrific way for corporate law departments to track case management information. They can, if desired, outsource some or all of the data maintenance with respect to their litigations to the outside counsel managing and litigating the matters. This way, when various individuals need to know the status of a case, since the data maintenance is done by those closest to the case and in a timely manner, the case management information is available to anyone who needs to access it.

Ten Great Reasons To Use Legal Extranets

1) For corporate law departments, this is a great way to have on-line access to the status of your cases, legal documents or case/trial calendars.

2) Legal collaboration systems provide anytime, anywhere access to case information and documents, wherever an Internet connection is available.

3) This is a turnkey (Application Service Provider or ASP) solution, there are no servers to set up and there is virtually no technical assistance required to set up a new collaboration system.

4) Collaboration systems can track many things -- cases, litigations, practice support projects, vendors, budgets, etc....

5) Easy tracking and documentation of system updates and other data activity.

6) For law firms, this is a great way to provide incremental services to clients.

7) Sophisticated security and data permission modules, so you can specifically control who has access to various types of data.

8) Every collaboration system is highly customizable and can be individually updated so that the feature set and graphics are set up in a manner consistent with the law firms and clients using this system.

9) These systems are delivered with user-configurable reporting modules providing reports which can be output on the screen, in spreadsheet format or in PDF format, providing many ways to report on and distribute your data.

10) Collaboration systems help you work more productively with your business partners !!

Flexible Legal Collaboration Software

It's critically important to build software which is flexible and can be adjusted to meet a variety of different needs.

We have used our software recently for many different types of projects in addition to the initial intended use of Litigation Support. Some of these areas include the construction of systems to track internal projects (status, due dates, costs, vendors, etc.). Other uses include change management and task tracking with the the IT discipline as well as other implementation to support business development efforts for some clients.

Thankfully, we are in the position, based on our object oriented method of programming and strong focus on developing reusable code, to adjust our software to meet a wide variety of emerging business needs and client requirements.

Using extranets for complex case management reporting needs

Although many think of extranets now of being SharePoint like systems which do not have the capability of tracking very complex litigation information, that is not the case.

We have many systems in place for our clients where we track information in multiple hierarchical levels. One example is that of a multiple plaintiff case where plaintiffs many have multiple surgeries, or they may have a long work history or a long history of using a certain product or a long medical chronology.

In all situations like this, we start with a single case, attached one or many plaintiffs to a case, and then track a myriad of data points -- many with rows and rows of date-based chronological data -- and then also provide the ability to report on all this data in a variety of ways.

Once you take all this -- and then factor in that we could have hundreds or thousands of like cases -- it becomes a complex tracking system very quickly. It is a far cry indeed from some of the "single screen" extranets we can all sign up for and use at no cost.

Those certainly have their target market and appeal - after all who does not like a useful, free application -- but it should not be confused with the functionality and utility of a complex case management application.

Master Case Calendaring

Keeping track of a calendar amongst many law firms and a client can be very diffuclt and time consuming Who has the latest version of a calendar, how can I get it, how can I update it. When are the upcoming trials that I need to plan for. These are all important and difficult issues for one to tackle.

Why not post a calendar on a secure internet site that a set of authorized clients can view, update and download at their convenience. Seems too simple and so easy to do that everyone must already doing that, correct? Well, sadly, that is not the case. Often times this is because law firms and clients can not figure out how to connect to each other's calendar system (like Outlook) across organizations.

Legal extranets solve this issue. Anyone connected to the internet can access a calendar as long as they are authorized to enter the legal extranet. Once connected, they can view the calendar and update it with appropriate events and information (meeting dates, times, locations, attendees, etc...). So, with this simple tool, everyone on the team is acutely aware of the litigation support calendar and events and confusion about dates and times becomes a thing of the best.